vagaries

Noun

vagary (plural vagaries)

1. An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
   • It now turns out that the Pitch Lake, like most other things, owes its appearance on the surface to no convulsion or vagary at all, but to a most slow, orderly, and respectable process of nature, by which buried vegetable matter, which would have become peat, and finally brown coal, in a temperate...1871, Charles Kingsley, “La Brea”, in At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. […], volume I, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 276
2. Something vague.
   • to speak in vagaries
3. An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.
   • And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable.1905, Jack London, War of the Classes, Preface

   Synonyms:

   boutade, caprice, capriccio, conceit, crotchet, delirament, fancy, fangle, figary, flisk